Submitted by Dillon Otto on the 2020 winter session program in Vienna, Austria sponsored by the School of Education…
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Budapest, Hungary. It was only a two-and-a-half-hour train ride from Vienna, and we stayed in an Airbnb. This was quite an experience for all of us as none of us had ever stayed in an Airbnb before, let alone one in another country. We arrived at our Airbnb and the location was a sight for sore eyes. None of us really wanted to go in, but once we got into the apartment building and then our apartment it was great. The apartment looked newly furnished and very clean.
The craziest thing about Budapest were the beautiful buildings that came out of nowhere. One minute you’d be looking at an everyday building and then out of nowhere popped up these amazing architectural wonders that were as beautiful as they were intricate. We went on a scooter tour of the most popular buildings of Budapest and saw many of these “out of place” yet beautiful places. The most impressive was the Hungarian Parliament Building because it is the largest building in Hungary and is situated right on the Danube River. Another fantastic structure was St. Stephen’s Basilica which is a huge and magnificent church located right in the heart of Budapest. The most amazing thing about the Basilica was the inside, it was decorated elaborately with paintings and sculptures and gold everywhere and it was quite different from any church I had seen in the United States. It was really interesting to see how much time was spent on the inside of this place and to see people going in and out of it just to see it and not attend the service. I’ve noticed in Vienna and in Budapest that at the churches there are almost always groups of people going in and out just to see the inside, whereas in the United States people don’t really go to a church just to see what the inside looks like.
What was also surprising about Budapest was how many people could speak English. Everywhere we went we had no trouble talking to locals and asking them questions. This was really surprising because this isn’t something you really see in the U.S. Most of the time when people from another country come to America, they are greeted with English and English only, but in Budapest, if you don’t know Hungarian, you’ll survive without any problems.